1. Patterns discovery in Slovenian public spending : a data-driven approach to corruption detectionJelena Joksimović, 2023, doktorska disertacija Opis: Corruption is a pervasive societal issue, entailing the misuse of public authority for personal benefits. Traditionally, corruption was estimated via perception surveys, which rely on probing the individuals about their views on corruption rather than directly measuring it. Such assessments encounter challenges in accurately capturing corruption and often diverge from actual corruption levels.
Recent advancements in data collection, spurred by calls for transparency in public institutions and fueled by enhanced computational and storage capabilities, opened unprecedented opportunities for a far more precise analysis of corruptive processes. By quantitatively analyzing concrete datasets, such as transactions between public sector and private companies, contractual documents, public procurement records, bid outcomes, and healthcare product prices, novel avenues emerged for both addressing and predicting corruption. These scientific endeavors aim to discover the best policies to mitigate corruption and rebuild trust in public institutions.
This doctoral dissertation pioneers this novel approach, forging a collaborative partnership with the Commission for the Prevention of Corruption in Slovenia (CPC). Harnessing state-of-the-art data mining, statistical analysis, and machine learning, we analyze a large CPC’s datasets detailing 17 years of public spending on private companies and reported receiving of gifts to public officials. We uncover an array of findings along three research directions:
1. We reveal the presence of self-organizing principles that govern Slovenian public expenditure. Such mechanisms are usually observed in more orderly (e.g. physical) systems and come across as surprising in this context, where interactions are dominated by human factors.
2. We construct an interactive framework tailored for CPC's use. It enables quick identification of suspicious private companies whose revenues from public sources exhibit visible disparities that correlate with changes of the government.
3. Finally, employing natural language processing, we uncover how seemingly innocent ceremonial gifts can foster favoritism and enable misuse of public positions for personal gains. We illustrate the disparities between the laws regulating gift reporting and the actual practices.
In conclusion, this research contributed: (i) new computational methods for data-driven analysis of corruption, and (ii) better understanding of societal processes that govern public spending in Slovenia. Our work delivers valuable recommendations to governmental, public, and administrative bodies. We hope these insights will bolster the use of transparent public data as the key tool in the fight against corruption.
Ključne besede: corruption, public spending, gift reporting, transparency, data mining, time series, unsupervised learning
Objavljeno v ReVIS: 17.02.2025; Ogledov: 508; Prenosov: 19
 Celotno besedilo (6,92 MB) |
2. The complexity of caffeine’s effects on regular coffee consumersMateja Lesar, Jakob Sajovic, Dušanka Novaković, Maša Primožič, Eva Vetrih, Martin Sajovic, Anja Žnidaršič, Peter Rogelj, Andreas Daffertshofer, Zoran Levnajić, Gorazd Drevenšek, 2025, izvirni znanstveni članek Opis: Why does coffee wake us up? Is it because it contains caffeine, or because we are used to it waking us up after drinking it? To answer this question, we recruited twenty habitual coffee drinkers who received either caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee (placebo) in a double-blind, randomized fashion. The two substances were identical except for the presence of caffeine. We measured cognitive performance, cardiovascular responses, and whole-head EEG during rest and during an auditory-oddball task. The same measurements were done before and after ingestion. We expected to find significant differences between caffeine and placebo groups across the outcome measures. However, except for the resting-state alpha power, changes due to ingestion in physiological responses and in cognitive functioning were not significantly different between the two groups. Actually, only one of the three cognitive measures was found to be significantly altered by the ingestion. These findings suggest that regular coffee consumers respond to coffee-like beverages independently of the presence of caffeine.
Ključne besede: caffeine, decaffeine, ERP, event related potentials (ERP), electroencephalography (EEG), EEG, auditory odball, cognitive performance, resting state EEG
Objavljeno v ReVIS: 11.02.2025; Ogledov: 573; Prenosov: 3
 Povezava na datoteko |
3. |
4. |
5. |
6. |
7. |
8. |
9. |
10. Statistična analiza pogostosti potresov na svetovni ravni : magistrska nalogaJernej Žagar, 2023, magistrsko delo Opis: Magistrska naloga vsebuje statistično analizo pogostosti potresov v svetovnem merilu. V nalogi
predstavimo zbiranje podatkov o potresnih dejavnostih, ki se nahajajo na spletni strani ameriške
znanstvene agencije. Z uporabo programskega jezika Python zbrane podatke očistimo, jih
analiziramo in predstavimo grafično. Z uporabo knjižnice GeoPandas posamezne lokacije
potresov prestavimo tudi na zemljevidu. Za vodilo analize uporabimo zastavljene hipoteze s
katerimi skušamo preveriti korelacijo med magnitudo, globino, posamezno lokacijo in časovno
komponento potresov. Pri tem se osredotočimo na potresno zanimive lokacije, obravnavamo
tudi Slovenijo.
Ključne besede: potresi, seizmologija, analiza velikih količin podatkov, magnituda, globina, gručenje
Objavljeno v ReVIS: 19.07.2023; Ogledov: 1588; Prenosov: 93
Celotno besedilo (3,83 MB) |
